The End of the World Survivors Club

by Adrian J. Walker

  ‘Of course. I’ll just get my kids—’

  But Mary’s hand was on my arm again. ‘Don’t worry, I can watch them.’

  I hesitated. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course, I’d be happy to. You go and do what you need to do.’

  ‘Right. OK. Thanks, Mary.’

  She smiled. ‘Take your time.’

  ‘Still a bloody disgrace.’ I heard Gerald say as I made for the steps. ‘Ought to be thrown overboard. Bloody lot of you.’

  Chapter 4

  They looked different. The last time I had seen them was in Castlelaw Barracks, the day before the helicopters took us. Bryce was still huge but there was less to his face, and his grin was somehow like an impression of itself. Richard’s skin was coarse, and there were more lines to his jagged features than I remembered. His eyes shone cobalt in the sun as I mounted the steps, and I don’t think I had ever seen him smile before that moment.

  ‘Beth,’ said Bryce, still within the guards’ grip. ‘Where’s Ed?’

  Captain Ulrich spoke before I could.

  ‘Are you sure you know this man?’

  ‘Look at him,’ I said. ‘He’s not exactly easy to mistake, is he?’

  He looked Bryce up and down and puffed through his well-sculpted nose. ‘No, I suppose not.’

  ‘One-in-a-million, buddy,’ said Bryce with a wink.

  ‘Yes, well, Mr One-in-a-million, you have stowed away on a vessel belonging to Sauver, an arm of the United Nations, possibly endangering the lives of its passengers and crew. More to the point, you were found vomiting over the side.’

  Bryce grimaced. ‘I don’t like boats.’

  Ulrich continued. ‘By rights I should eject you at the next port. Or, as your friend downstairs says –’ he pushed his face towards Bryce ‘– throw you overboard.’

  ‘You wouldnae,’ he said, sizing him up. ‘Nah, you wouldnae. I told you, I was nowhere near the camp, and I’m seasick, not ill. If I was I would never have got on board. There’re kids here, for fuck’s sake. I’m not a monster.’

  The captain hardened his frosty glare. Bryce’s grin drooped like a black lily.

  ‘Tell me you wouldnae!’

  Eventually the captain’s shoulders fell.

  ‘No, I – I wouldnae. But the fact remains you are a threat to the safety of this boat. Therefore you must be taken below deck and quarantined in the medical centre until you have been tested thoroughly.’ He turned to the guards. ‘Take him now, please, and ensure that he is restrained until further notice.’

  ‘Aw, fuck,’ said Bryce, kicking his heels as the guards dragged him away down the deck. ‘How long do I have to be down there?’

  ‘Five days,’ said the captain. ‘Maybe more. We must be sure.’

  ‘Buckets!’ he called back as he disappeared through a door. ‘You’d better have plenty of buckets down there, that’s all I’m saying. Plenty of buckets!’

  The captain took a deep breath and turned to me.

  ‘Mrs …?’

  ‘Beth,’ I said. I caught a flicker in Richard’s expression. ‘Just Beth.’

  ‘Well, just Beth, I hope you are right about your friend. Otherwise you’ve put everyone in great danger, including your children. Now, if you’ll excuse me.’

  He went to leave, but I stopped him.

  ‘Why does the ship keep stopping?’

  ‘A minor fault. Nothing to worry about.’

  ‘It’s happened three times already,’ said Richard. ‘And we’ve barely been at sea a day.’

  The captain looked him up and down. ‘Like I said, a minor fault. Some problem with the diagnostics software, I believe. It is being addressed, but as I am sure you are aware we are short-staffed. Now please, I must get back to my station.’

  ‘Software?’ I said. ‘What kind of software?’

  He frowned. ‘I have no idea, I am not a systems engineer. But I believe we run on Unix.’

  ‘Unix? I know that. I could … help if … if you like?’

  He gave me a quizzical look. ‘Thank you, but that won’t be necessary. Now, if you will excuse me, I must get back.’

  When he had left, I slumped on the railing, staring out at the expanse of sea that separated us from the land. ‘Christ, what was all that about? “Please, sir, can I help you fix your ship?” I feel like a bloody idiot.’

  Richard laughed. ‘You were only offering to help. It’s better than sitting down there sunbathing with the rest of them.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ I turned to him. ‘How are you, anyway? How’s …’ I paused again, like I had done with Mary, because I remembered he’d had a boy. ‘Richard, I’m sorry, I haven’t seen your son. I tried to stay with him at the barracks when the helicopters came, but he was put on a different one to us and when we landed, well, you know what the camps were like, I searched for him, but—’

  He touched my shoulder, smiling. ‘Beth, it’s fine, I found Josh.’

  ‘Oh, that’s good news.’

  ‘He’s on board too, just below deck. Bit of a dicky tummy.’

  That warm imprint of his hand was still on my shoulder. He noticed and snatched it away. ‘And, er, how are you doing? Your kids OK?’ He nodded down at the play area, where Mary and Alice were now sitting together, playing some invisible game with their fingers. ‘I see you’ve got some help there. That’s good.’ He gave me a nervous look. ‘I assume Ed didn’t make it on board.’

  ‘They wouldn’t let him. No papers.’

  ‘Damnit, I’m sorry.’

  I frowned. ‘Wait a minute, how did Bryce get on?’

  His expression hardened. ‘Seems he snuck on when all the attention was on you and your husband, which doesn’t seem at all fair to me.’

  He shook his head, lips tight. ‘So what’s Ed’s plan?’

  ‘Beg pardon?’

  ‘I assume he’s finding his own way to Cape Town?’

  He spoke as if there was nothing extraordinary about the words. I laughed; a spasm of surprise.

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

  ‘Richard, I’m surprised my husband even made it out of Edinburgh, let alone all the way to Cornwall. I can only assume it was down to your help. How did you do it anyway, did you find a car or something?’

  He gave his own involuntary laugh at this.

  ‘Car? No. We ran, Beth.’

  ‘Ran? But that’s, like, four or five hundred miles.’

  ‘More. And it was Ed’s idea. He’s the one who started running.’

  I stared blankly back at him, trying to conjure an image of Ed running, but it just wouldn’t come.

  ‘What about the others? The soldiers who were left. Grimes, was she with you? And that old man, Harvey wasn’t it?’

  He shook his head. ‘They didn’t make it. But Beth, I have no doubt your husband will be doing everything he can to get to South Africa. In fact –’ he looked towards the front of the ship ‘– at this rate I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets there before us. You were right to offer Ulrich help, Beth. He needs it. He’s just not telling us.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I was chatting to someone last night, a retired merchant seaman from Plymouth, who told me about these ships.’ He tapped the handrail. ‘They’re not as shiny and new as they look. They’ve been cobbled together in a hurry, bits and bobs from other systems, hybrids basically. He thinks they’re unstable, untested, not fit for sea.’

  ‘Surely they wouldn’t try to evacuate us in ships they thought would sink?’

  ‘They may not have had a choice.’

  ‘Well, so long as we get to Cape Town. It’s not that much of a journey, is it? And we’ve got the rest of the fleet for support.’

  He nodded ahead. ‘Do you see any other ships?’

  I peered ahead into the hazy southern skyline, but the trail of distant dots that had been our fleet was no longer visible. I felt a chill. ‘We’re being left behind.’

  ‘Way behind. We
should be at the Bay of Biscay by now, but we’ve barely crossed the channel. And what’s more we’re drifting off course. Our longitude’s all wrong. We’re far further west than we need to be.’

  Richard had a way of talking that made me want to up my game. I found myself saying things I wouldn’t normally say.

  Things such as this: ‘You appear very well versed in nautical affairs. How come?’

  Nautical affairs.

  ‘I used to be a wreck diver,’ he replied. ‘Back in the day. Did a fair bit of sailing in the Med. Boy’s stuff, really, nothing serious.’

  ‘Right.’

  I looked at him, staring into the wind with those steely eyes of his. Though slim, his chest was broad and taut, and I followed the sinews in his neck down the length of his arms. It was a natural physique, one that could not have been sculpted within a gym. But it was his eyes that drew me in; they seemed to hide stories.

  It felt strange to let my gaze wander over him freely like this – dangerous, yet somehow acceptable, as if I was hanging over a ravine from a safety rope. The last man I had appraised in this way was Ed as I watched him change one morning in the barracks. The view then was, well, different.

  He’d put on weight in the five years of our marriage, but that wasn’t the problem. Everything else was the problem. The stoop, the downturned mouth, the lethargy in his movements. In my opinion there’s absolutely nothing wrong with a bit of chunk on a man, so long as he’s happy. But Ed wasn’t happy, and it showed in everything he did.

  Richard glanced at me and I looked away, following the white trails of froth in the boat’s wake.

  ‘Better go,’ he said. ‘See if Josh is feeling any perkier.’

  ‘Aye,’ I said, straightening up. ‘Me too, better get back to the kids.’

  We stood facing each other, caught in that awkward moment where possibilities present themselves without warning. Suddenly the ship gave another lurch and he fell into me. I caught him by the elbows and we froze for a few seconds, looking at each other, trapped in our own inertia.

  When the moment had passed, the engines started again and he pulled away, clearing his throat.

  ‘It’s, er, good to see you, Beth. Bye.’

  He strode off down the deck, and I watched every single step he took until he’d disappeared inside.

  Go ahead. Throw your stones.

  It won’t take much to break the glass in this house.

  Chapter 5

  For two days we continued south. Richard was right: we were straying west and the coast to which we should have been hugging grew further away by the hour. There was no sign of our fleet, and we grew accustomed to the ship’s regular engine failures. Twice every hour we would feel the deck lurch, finding railings or doors upon which to steady ourselves and enduring the minute or two of silent drift before the engines rumbled and we were away again.

  But that wasn’t all. There were other things wrong with the ship. During one lurch, an old lady was hit in the hip by an unbolted canteen chair, and electric shocks from door handles and metal bannisters became commonplace. The crew seemed distracted, and occasionally we would see troops of them hurrying between decks or disappearing behind doors. We gave them our complaints but nothing was done, and Ulrich was nowhere to be seen.

  Mary and I gravitated to one other, and she slipped effortlessly into a role as part-time carer. If I had to go to the toilet or back to the cabin, she would always be there to look after the kids, and it had been a long time since I had seen Alice smile so much.

  ‘So when am I going to meet this husband of yours?’ I said, one afternoon on deck.

  She gave me a worried smile. ‘He’s sick.’

  ‘What, like, seasick?’

  ‘No, Nate’s got the constitution of an ox. It’s something else. I’m worried, to be honest, he’s never ill.’

  I looked around the deck. I hadn’t seen Richard since our encounter on the second day, nor any sign of his son.

  ‘Oh, fuck. Mary, you don’t think …?’

  Mary shook her head. ‘I meant it, Beth, he’s never ill.’

  ‘You.’

  I looked up as a shadow darkened our spot. It was Mildred, Gerald’s wife, looking fierce. ‘It was you. Your fault. You’re the one who let that beastly man on board, and now he’s ill. My Gerald. He’s sick!’

  She sobbed into a handkerchief. Mary went to console her, but she shook her off.

  ‘And you can get off me as well!’ she cried.

  She glared at her, then at me, and walked away blowing her nose.

  I became aware of a hundred sets of eyes peering at me, and none of them friendly. I stood up.

  ‘Mary, I have to go and see Bryce.’

  She nodded. ‘Do that. I’ll watch the kids.’

  I found Bryce deep in the bowels of the ship where the walls murmured with the engines like a deranged choir.

  ‘You cannot enter,’ said the pale-skinned nurse, as he pulled down the shutter to his room. ‘And do not touch him. Five minutes.’

  ‘Jesus, he’s not on death row.’

  ‘Five minutes.’

  The nurse walked briskly away down the narrow corridor. I put my face to the grill. Inside was a square cell lit by fluorescent light, and upon a low bed sat Bryce, still cuffed, hunched over a bucket.

  ‘He’s got a stick up his arse that one,’ he said, spitting into the bucket. His voice was as dry as sand. ‘And I’d ram it further up if I could get close enough. He won’t even feed me properly. Just fucking … water, and this weird milky stuff. Tastes like spunk.’ He spat again. ‘Not that I’ve ever had the pleasure.’

  ‘Bryce …’

  ‘Just, you know, that’s how I imagine it tasting … oh, Christ …’

  He groaned and heaved. Nothing came up.

  ‘Bryce, what’s wrong with you?’

  He turned his great head and looked up at me. His hair was lank and in straggles, his eyes drawn and bloodshot. Untold years of untamed beard clamoured for space on his vomit-splattered cheeks.

  He raised a smile.

  ‘I’m right as rain, darlin’. Never better.’

  ‘Bryce, I’m serious. People are sick up there.’

  His gaze returned to the bucket. ‘It’s not the virus. I’m just seasick, all right? Besides, I was nowhere near the camp. We never even made it through the fence. Ask Ed, he was with me all the time.’ His eyes narrowed, noticing my expression. ‘Where is he, anyway?’

  ‘He didn’t make it on.’

  He straightened up, claiming more of the room’s meagre space.

  ‘But I saw him on the gangplank. I fucking threw him up there. He was with you. That’s when I found my own way on at the back.’

  ‘They wouldn’t let him on.’

  He watched me for a while, then shrank back to his bucket.

  ‘Well, fuck,’ he said. Then: ‘He’ll find you, Beth. Don’t worry, I know he will.’

  ‘That’s what Richard said. Why is everyone so convinced of my husband’s abilities to cross continents all of a sudden?’

  ‘Because we saw what he was made of, that’s why.’

  ‘Crossing Britain’s one thing. Crossing Europe and Africa’s another. He’d need a boat, for a start.’

  Bryce raised his head. ‘There was a boat. At the house we stayed in, there was a boat in the garage.’

  ‘He doesn’t even know how to sail.’

  He turned to me, eyes dark. ‘You should learn to have a bit of faith in the people who love you, Beth. It’s not every man who’d run alone through a hundred-mile canyon with a broken ankle and nothing to fuel him but crow meat.’

  I shook my head, frustrated.

  ‘Whatever, I’m not here to talk about Ed. I just need to know you’re sure you were nowhere near the camp. I vouched for you, and if you’ve brought that virus aboard then I’m in trouble too.’

  ‘I’m telling you, for the last time, I wasnae anywhere near it. I’m not sick, I just fucking hate –’ From nowh
ere he gave a tremendous belch, and a torrent of vomit hit the bucket beneath him. He groaned and wiped his beard. ‘– boats.’

  The speaker hanging above the door crackled.

  ‘Will all passengers please make their way to deck B for an announcement. Deck B, all passengers, thank you.’

  ‘I’d better go,’ I said.

  ‘Beth,’ he said, as I backed away.

  ‘What?’

  He looked back at me through straggles of wet hair.

  ‘He’ll come. I’m telling you.’

  ‘Whatever you say, Bryce.’

  The deck was full when I returned. I found Mary and the children near the play area and stood with Arthur in my arm and Alice at my hip, ignoring the cold looks from my fellow passengers. Captain Ulrich looked down from the upper deck, a few wisps of cloud feathering the sky behind him.

  ‘Ladies, gentlemen, if I may have your attention please.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ somebody shouted.

  ‘Yeah, why is everyone getting sick, innit?’

  Ulrich raised a hand. ‘Please, I understand you are worried, and—’

  ‘My husband’s shitting through the eye of a needle,’ said another voice.

  ‘Please—’

  ‘Same with my wife. I can barely go in the cabin now, it’s like the bloody Somme in there.’

  ‘If I may—’

  ‘It’s the virus! That Scottish bloke brought it on!’

  The deck boomed with dreary jeers.

  This is why I don’t like crowds. I mean, I wouldn’t say ‘people’ but …

  Actually yes, people. I don’t like people. There, I said it.

  People are idiots. Awkward bundles of conflicting desires with a single destination: death. It’s no wonder we never got anything done in the days of Kate Winslet. I mean, we thought we did, we thought we’ve made progress, but we could have had the internet in the fifteenth century if we’d only pulled our fingers out and stopped drowning witches for a second.

  And even then, what would we have had? The internet, that’s what; what happens when the world has a nice wee chat.